Running For: Council
Campaign Statement
In the last 25 years as an educator I have witnessed so many bright, talented students struggle to pay for college. I have always felt extremely fortunate that I was able to graduate from such an amazing Institution debt free. If honored by being elected to the Cooper Union Alumni Association I would work vigorously to bring back Peter Cooper’s vision of free education. Cooper Union helped mold me into the person I am today, and I want to ensure that we rebuild and restore Copper’s legacy for the future.
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Biography
Angela Alés is a multidisciplinary and multi-cultural artist born in Barranquilla, Colombia, of Andalusian and Lebanese descent. Alés moved to the United States in 1984 and graduated from Cooper Union in 1993.
While at Cooper, Alés was a very active member of the student body. She was part of the Saturday Program, worked in the Student Services Office, started a workout program approved by Dean Baker, and became an RA her senior year. After graduating, she was asked by the school to travel to Puerto Rico and to be part of the first portfolio review throughout the island.
Alés has twenty-five years experience teaching art K through 12 and Higher Education. She is currently Tenure Track Professor at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts. Her teaching areas of concentration include, painting, drawing, figure drawing, concept development, art appreciation and color theory. Specialized experience includes preparing students for AP portfolio review and college admissions as well as preparing students for Adobe Industry Certification.
She is the recipient of the Sontag Prize in Urban Education from Harvard in 2015 & 2016 and winner of Solo Art Miami 2010. Alés has been a cultural ambassador and promoter of the Arts throughout her career, including four years as Artistic Producer for The Carnival of Barranquilla in Miami, FL, the largest Colombian carnival in the US; Educational Specialist for Orange County Public Schools, Visual Arts Curriculum and Standards.
Her personal work interweaves the magical realism flavor of her Latin American roots with the surrealist technique of Automatism that allows her to tap into her subconscious. Most recently, her socio-political experience as an immigrant and a female artist living in the United States, have come to the forefront of her inner dialogue and have coalesced as a central representation of her artistic voice.
Her painting, Building a Nation, which depicts the struggle and the birth of a colonized, immigrant nation is being used throughout NYC high schools, (https://unerased.org/blog/building-a-nation), as part of their Civics curriculum. Digitally, Building a Nation has been part of the Tenement Museum educational program.
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